The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

In the earliest and rudest states of society, war and the chase become at once the business of life, and, with the needful preparations of weapons and other requisites, suffice to supply each day with its full complement of labour and pastime. A very slight rise, however, in the social scale, creates the desire for some artificial means of filling up the leisure hours of life; and the modes adopted for this purpose often form no uncertain criterion of the age in which they originate. We accordingly find traces of the existence of games both of chance and skill from a very remote period. Reference has already been made to spherical and truncated stones, measuring from an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, which are frequently found in tumuli. For the former the name of Bead-stones is proposed, and as they are generally perforated, their use as personal ornaments has been assumed as probable, notwithstanding their cumbrous size, and the unattractive appearance of many of them. But as they are also very frequently flat on one side, there is greater probability of the original purpose of the latter class, at least, having been for table-stones (Anglo-Saxon, tæfelstan) or draughtsmen, in which case the perforation might serve to string them together, for carrying about. In Ireland, and still more frequently in Norway, draughtsmen are found alongside of the weapons and other relics buried with the warrior. They are made generally of bone, of a conical or hemispherical shape, and with a hole in the bottom, designed, as is presumed, to admit of their use on shipboard. With these it is supposed the northmen beguiled the tedium of their long voyages; and the estimation in which they are held is implied in their deposition among the most favourite relics of the dead. We learn from Tacitus that the Germans were so passionately addicted to gambling, that they staked not only their property but their personal liberty. The Romans were themselves scarcely less given to such excesses. Among the many interesting relics restored to light from the ruins of Pompeii, not the least valuable as illustrations of the manners of the first century in Southern Italy, are the cogged dice of the old Roman gamblers. But besides these games which mingled the incentive and the excitement of chance and skill, there appears also to have been in use, from a very early period, others of the simpler class, still favourites among our rustic population, such as bowling, nine-pins, and the like; which, under the various names of skales or kayles, loggats, closh, &c., are frequently mentioned in ancient statutes, and have been found represented on manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The implements of such pastimes are not such as were likely, in many cases, to be long preserved, though it is by no means improbable that the spherical stone-balls frequently found along with ancient relics, and even in the tumuli, may have been used for some such purpose.[590] One interesting and well-authenticated example, however, is known of the discovery of a complete set of the implements for such a game, in the parish of Balmaclellan, Kirkcudbrightshire. They are thus described by the well-known antiquary, Mr. Joseph Train: "In the summer of 1834, as the servants of Mr. Bell of Baryown, were casting peats on Ironmacaunnie Moor, when cutting near the bottom of the moss, they laid open with their spades what appeared to be the instruments of an ancient game, consisting of an oaken ball, eighteen inches in circumference, and seven wooden pins, each thirteen inches in length, of a conical shape, with a circular top. These ancient Reel Pins, as they are termed by Strutt, were all standing erect on the hard till, equidistant from each other, with the exception of two, which pointed towards the ball that lay about a yard in front, from which it may be inferred they were overthrown in the course of the game. The ball has been formed of solid oak, and, from its decayed state, must have remained undisturbed for centuries, till discovered at a depth of not less than twelve feet from the original surface. At Pompeii, utensils are often found, seemingly in the very position in which they were last used. This may be accounted for by the suddenness of the calamity that befell that devoted city; but what induced or impelled the ancient gamesters, in this remote corner of the Glenkens, to leave the instruments of their amusements in what might be considered the middle of the game? These relics, which are in my possession, can now only be prized for their curiosity, the singular position in which they were found, and the relation they bear to ancient times."[591] The moss in which this remarkable discovery was made is described as a place where peats have been cut from time immemorial. It were vain to speculate on the origin or owners of these homely relics of obsolete pastimes; yet to the curious fancy, indulging in the reanimation of such long-silent scenes, they seem suggestive of the sudden intrusion, it may be, of invaders, the hasty call to arms, the utter desolation of the scene, and then the slow lapse of unnumbered centuries, during which the moss accumulated above them so gently that it seems as if the old revellers were to return and play out their unfinished game.

Amusements of the latter class scarcely admit of much refinement, and may well be supposed to have exercised fully as much ingenuity among the ancient players of the Glenkens, as they now do in the bowling-green or skittle-ground. From them, indeed, modern refinement has educed the practised art of the billiard-table. In a simpler age the improvement assumed a more practical form, and gave way to putting the stone, throwing the hammer, and the like trials of strength, which appear to have been favourite pastimes among the Scottish Highlanders from the earliest periods to which their traditions extend.

In complete contrast to these are the amusements indicated by the bone draughtsmen or bead-stones of the tumuli. They are appropriately classed by Strutt in his "Sports and Pastimes," under the general title of "Sedentary Games;" and he furnishes much curious information regarding medieval pastimes, of which traces may be detected in the remoter periods into which we are inquiring. The construction of regular draughtsmen and chessmen is in itself an evidence of increased taste for such amusements. The ancients employed stones, shells, or nuts as counters, and also, there is reason to think, as tablemen, in games of this nature. Hence the Greek name ψηφοι, and the Roman calculi and scrupuli; from whence scrupus, a table-man, or chessman. The Scandinavian terms are of similar import; and among the ancient Northern games which have survived as popular pastimes in Iceland and Lapland, we find the very same which figure among the illuminations of medieval manuscripts, and have influenced the grotesque decorations of our early ecclesiastical architecture. "Of such games," says a writer in the Report of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, "we find that our Pagan ancestors were acquainted with at least three different sorts, namely, hnefatafl, fist-play, i.e., hand-play;[592] hnottafl, nut-play; and skáktafl, chess. Hnottafl signifies properly a game played with nuts, or pieces shaped like nuts. A húni—i.e., a bear, or bear's cub—was anciently the principal personage in it; but in Iceland, where the fox is the only beast of prey, this animal eventually superseded the bear, and the game then came to be denominated refskál. The other pieces represented sheep, or lambs, pursued by Reynard. In the variety of this game, which still forms one of the favourite diversions of the Laplanders, the fox continues to play his part, with this difference, that he there pursues geese instead of lambs; as in the Gänsespiel of the Germans, the Fox and geese of the English, the Ganzespeel of the Dutch, the Jeu d'oie of the French, &c. In Denmark a dog usually takes the place of the fox, and hares of the geese; and hence the game is there called Hund og hare, or hound and hare." According to the Irish chroniclers, Cahir Mor, who died A.D. 177, left, among other legacies to his son, both chessboards (fichell) and chessmen (muintir;) and the Welsh laws of Howel Dha, (circa A.D. 943,) refer to some species of game played with pieces of different colours, (werin,) on a table-board, (tawlbwrdd.) In Bishop Percy's "Translation of Runic Poetry," a Northern hero says,—"I am master of nine accomplishments. I play at chess; I know how to engrave Runic characters," &c.; and in a curious Anglo-Saxon poem, translated for the first time into English by Mr. J. M. Kemble in his paper on Anglo-Saxon Runes, this stanza occurs:—

Chessman is ever
Play and laughter
To the proud, where
Warriors sit
In the beer-hall
Blithe together.

It is not necessary to assume that all, or indeed any of these allusions necessarily apply to the game of chess, but only to one of the old table-games, played with pieces, many of which will more readily account for the "play and laughter" in the warrior's hall than that skilful and complicated game. These, as well as so many other of the primitive arts and rites of the North, were in all probability brought with the earlier nomades from the eastern cradle-land of our race; for more than one representation of such table-games has been discovered among the pictorial decorations of the Egyptian temples. Dr. Brunton has figured two of these at Medinat Haboo, in his Excerpta Hieroglyphica, in one of which (Plate XIII.) the table and pieces are partly obliterated, but in the other (Plate XI.) it is observable that the pieces are all alike, resembling the most common modern form of chess-pawns. The players are also in both cases moving their pieces at the same time; so that the Egyptian game evidently bore very slight resemblance to chess, and may with more probability be sought for among the early table-games of the north of Europe.

The great antiquity of the game of chess has been long since established on indisputable evidence. For its invention and earliest form the best authorities agree in looking to India, whither the simpler table-games of Egypt may have passed before the migration of the Teutonic races from Asia, and been returned from thence to Europe in their later and more complicated forms. In the ninth century, while yet the Northmen were only known along the British coasts as the dreaded marauding Vikings, Ragnar Lodbrog is reputed to have visited the Hellespont, and the intercourse between the Scandinavians and the Greeks of the Lower Empire, is an accredited feature of well authenticated history. But pilgrimages to Rome, and the passing and repassing of the clergy from Britain to the Continent, were matters of common occurrence at an earlier date; so that there can be no difficulty as to the means by which the game might be introduced from Asia to the north of Europe. Into this curious question Sir Frederick Madden has entered with great learning and ability, collecting the numerous observations of previous writers, and illustrating them from his own copious stores.[593] It will suffice for our present purpose to notice the remarkable illustrations of the implements of this game which have been discovered in Scotland, surpassing in number and value any specimens of ancient chessmen known to exist, if we except the set still preserved in the Cabinet of Antiquities in the Bibliothèque du Roi at Paris, and which there is satisfactory evidence for believing may be the very chessmen presented to Charlemagne by the Empress Irene, or her successor Nicephorus.

In the spring of 1831, the inroads effected by the sea undermined and carried away a considerable portion of a sandbank in the parish of Uig, Isle of Lewis, and uncovered a small subterranean stone building like an oven, at some depth below the surface. The exposure of this singular structure having excited the curiosity, or more probably the cupidity, of a peasant who chanced to be working in the neighbourhood, he proceeded to break into it, when he was astonished to see what he concluded to be an assemblage of elves or gnomes upon whose mysteries he had unconsciously intruded. The superstitious Highlander flung down his spade, and fled home in dismay; but incited by the bolder curiosity of his wife he was at length induced to return to the spot, and bring away with him the singular little ivory figures, which had not unnaturally appeared to him the pigmy sprites of Celtic folk-lore. They consisted in all of at least ninety-two pieces, including fourteen tablemen or draughtsmen, eight of which are kings, eight queens, thirteen bishops, fifteen knights, and twelve figures of footmen, to which Sir Frederick Madden gives the name of warders.[594] These have been so carefully and minutely illustrated in the valuable remarks in the Archæologia, that a slight description will now suffice.